Art Deco Garbage*

I am not a big fan of the 2010 National Chicle set.  I know plenty of collectors who love the set.  I know a lot of collectors who hate it.  It has always been really low on my list.  There have been plenty of painting/sketch/art sets produced over the last two decades that it's not really hard to find a few favorites.  I spent a chunk of the past year working on one of the Topps Gallery Heritage sets.....

which is one of the best art sets in my opinion.  Plenty of others that I could post here too.  There are some decent art cards in the National Chicle set, if you pick and chose single cards, you can find some winners.  Sort of.  One of my favorite Cardinals cards.....

the painting of Brock is nice, but is that a Venezuelan flag in the background?  Cool if this were a Dave Concepcion card.  Miguel Cabrera is also an acceptable player for a Venezuelan flag background.  

Beyond the odd touches, again Lou Brock with a Venezuelan flag, my reasons for not liking the National Chicle set are pretty short.  Mainly, I despise the revisionist cards in this product where players are drawn into other uniforms.  I couldn't find my Lou Gehrig soul patch card, but there are still other really bad cards to show as examples.

As a Cardinals fan, this one is downright terrible.......

Pujols as a Brown?  Sigh.  So many things are wrong with this card.  There are worse though, with this Babe Ruth card being the crown jewel of awful in this set.  

I guess Babe Ruth was at least on the Braves for a season at the very end of his career.  Better than Pujols as a Brown considering he has no connection to the Orioles or Browns.  If you are going to make a Babe Ruth card on the Braves, then why is he still standing in Yankee Stadium?  

The wrist bands half way up the forearms, turtleneck looking thing.  This is a Chipper Jones card with a Babe Ruth head with the facade of Yankee Stadium in the background.  

These cards are sort of like the revisionist history quotes that people post all over the internet.  One of my biggest pet peeves in life.  I hate made up history.....

Abe said this in a movie.  Right?  

So, what card could possibly make me want to touch such a terrible set?

Imagine that Topps made a card in this set, of a younger player at the time, whose card had a pleasing background that matched the team's color scheme.  Picture that this same card actually pictured the player in their uniform, not of another nearby team, or some other weird connection to the past or future.

The card is also autographed and I am willing to overlook the rest of the set for this card.....

It's not a rookie autograph, rookie card, or anything overly special, but it's just a nice card with a good player's autograph.  Bumgarner has been a really good player to this point in his career, a few World Series, a whole bunch of home runs, and a lot of snot rockets.  

                                    

I actually had this card a few years ago, traded it to a Giants fan, and I sort of regretted it a short time later.  I have a few other nice Bumgarner autographs, so at the time it did not feel like much of a loss.  The Giants have had a rough last year and I feel like there have been a few more nice cards of Bumgarner floating around and they seem to have come down a bit too.  

Could not pass this one by.  The asterisk?  

*While the National Chicle set is generally art deco garbage in my opinion, this card is an art deco gem,

About Those Projects....

Yeah, I made some promise about finding specific cards from specific sets.  I made a tab at the top of my blog where I was supposed to track the projects and report on my progress.  That hasn't happened for a few reasons.

1.  I am writing about half of the posts that I have made in previous years

2.  A limited amount of posts means that I really have to think about which cards are deserving of a post versus what cards are not deserving of a post.

3.  Picking up a single card from a set I am trying to finish is not always exciting.

I know there are very good ways to solve these problems and I am planning on addressing them in a post sometime next week.  So, here is a quick update on where my set projects are versus what the little tab up at the top of my blog says......



1.  1999 Molten Metal Xplosion 

It's done.  It took forever to get a copy of the Pedro Martinez card that was ridiculously expensive because that card is ridiculously difficult to find.

The box that this set is in weighs more than any other set in my collection.  At least it seems that way.  I should take it to the Post Office and stick it on the scale.  It would be fun.  

2.  1999 Topps Gallery Heritage 

Done too.  These cards deserve their own post.  It doesn't even have to have words, these are just really nice cards.  

3.  2002 Bowman Futures Game Autographs 

I have had the opportunity to finish this set, but I am being a bit picky about the cards.  The surfaces of the card are glossy and the autographs tend to smudge off.  For example, I already had a copy of the Ryan Ludwick autograph.  I bought it long ago when he was on the Cardinals.  The autograph is basically gone.

I found a fairly clean copy for my set....

There are a couple of imperfections there.  If I find a really clean version I might trade up again, but I am not really sure I am going to do much better than this copy.  Mint seems to be a pipe dream with this set.

My latest card from this set is a Dennis Tankersley.....

He is a St. Louis native who never quite turned out the way he was supposed to turn out.  Again, I have seen a lot of copies of this card, they are not expensive, but I waited until I was able to find a decent copy.  I went with this card.

In conclusion, I have not finished the Bowman Futures Autograph set.  It has nothing to do with time or effort and everything to do with being picky.

Things I Am Sorting Part 10

Yes, I am still working on putting some sets together.  That Pedro Martinez Skybox Molten Metal card is proving difficult and might be spilling over into my other set projects.  I haven't completed any of the sets that I have listed on the Projects In Progess tab at the top of the page, but I have a stack of cards sitting on my desk that need scanning and posting.  

Tonight is going to be an update on my 1999 Topps Gallery Heritage set.  A little bit of logistics first.  When I originally posted the set I had not sorted through my collection yet to see what cards were already here.  I had McGwire and Griffey off the checklist since I had posted them here in other posts.  Here is the checklist minus the Griffey and Big Mac.  

TH1- Hank Aaron 

TH2- Ben Grieve 

TH3- Nomar Garciaparra 

TH4- Roger Clemens 

TH5- Travis Lee

TH6- Tony Gwynn

TH7- Alex Rodriguez 

TH9- Derek Jeter 

TH10- Sammy Sosa

TH11- Scott Rolen 

TH12- Chipper Jones

TH13- Cal Ripken Jr. 

TH14- Kerry Wood 

TH15-Barry Bonds

TH16- Juan Gonzalez 

TH17- Mike Piazza

TH18- Greg Maddux 

TH19- Frank Thomas  

The highlighted cards on the checklist I was able to find amongst my boxes of cards.  So, out of the 20 card set I am looking for a total of 9 cards, or just under 50% of the set.  The better news is that I have found a few of the cards I am missing from the set over the past two months.  

Here is a look at the new cards........

Of the three new cards I picked up for this project this is my favorite card.  There have been plenty of art sets over the years, but Topps did a really good job with this set.  I like that Topps put Maddux in glasses on his card.  Gives him that accountant sort of look that I remember him having while he was playing.  It's hard to believe sometimes that a short guy who barely threw 90 was one of the best pitchers of the steroid era.  This is a really cool card.  

I like the Aaron card too.  Always nice to see the greats from yesteryear in the modern baseball card sets.  I like the Boston Braves markings on the cards, but the Topps Gum ad over his shoulder seems a little bit forced.  

Last card.   

I know there is all the steroid stuff with Juan Gone, but I don't really care.  The guy could hit.  Something about this card feels a little bit unfinished.  The helmet has the Rangers T logo, but the jersey just seems like it isn't finished.  It's a common thing in the art world actually. 

This Titian painting is in the St. Louis Art Museum.  He was commissioned to make the painting, but died before he finished it.  

Same sort of idea between the Titian painting and the Juan Gone card.  The main figure on each is completed, but the edges and details are a little bit vague.  Not really completed.  

Overall, happy to have the three new cards which brings the set completion down to just six cards.  

TH3- Nomar Garciaparra 

TH4- Roger Clemens 

TH6- Tony Gwynn

TH9- Derek Jeter 

TH12- Chipper Jones

TH15-Barry Bonds

Set Project #5

I recently did a post on a Mark McGwire card from the 1999 Topps Gallery set.  Topps has produced a ton of rehash sets over the last decade, but the Topps Gallery Heritage set was one of the first to make those types of rehash products popular.  As I recall, they were roughly one per box and very popular at the time of the sets release.  I know that I have a bunch of them lingering around my collection, but I also know that I do not have the complete set.

Here is the McGwire card from the other week.....

Again, I know that these sorts of cards have now become commonplace, but these Gallery Heritage cards have are pretty special to me.  They really were the first insert set that I tried to fully assemble.  While I know I did not succeed, I plan on fixing that 17 years later.  In fact, I started last week by picking up a copy of the Ken Griffey Jr. card.  

I know I did not have this card......

the backs are also the same as the 1953 Topps cards.....

Very nice card.  So, here is my biggest problem with these cards at the moment.  I know that I am missing a bunch of the cards in this set, but as I have been looking through my boxes of cards the Gallery Heritage cards are not in with the rest of what I have out of the 1999 Topps Gallery set.  I do have a big box of insert cards from the 1990s and early 2000s that they are undoubtedly in.  So for the moment I am going to post the entire checklist down here at the bottom of the post, but I know that many of these will be checked off in the coming days as I sort through a few boxes of cards.....

TH1- Hank Aaron 

TH2- Ben Grieve 

TH3- Nomar Garciaparra 

TH4- Roger Clemens 

TH5- Travis Lee

TH6- Tony Gwynn

TH7- Alex Rodriguez 

TH9- Derek Jeter 

TH10- Sammy Sosa

TH11- Scott Rolen 

TH12- Chipper Jones

TH13- Cal Ripken Jr. 

TH14- Kerry Wood 

TH15-Barry Bonds

TH16- Juan Gonzalez 

TH17- Mike Piazza

TH18- Greg Maddux 

TH19- Frank Thomas 

The Griffey and McGwire cards are the 8 and 20 spots.  Off the top of my head looking at the pictures of on Ebay and COMC, I think I also have Garciaparra, Lee, ARod, Jeter, Sosa, Rolen, Ripken, Piazza, and Thomas.  I might have more, either way I am figuring I will need about 10 or so cards to finish the set.  

I will update the cards I need in a few days, but for now I have placed the entire checklist under the set projects tab at the top of the blog.....

A Venerable Old Card Part 36

In years past I have made up a post about the players that I am hoping will make the Hall of Fame.  This year's vote announcement is still a little ways away, but there is a possibility that a few players and executives could make it into Cooperstown at the start of the Winter Meetings on Monday.  One name that I am pulling for is Mark McGwire.  I know that known steroid user's election into the Hall has been a controversial subject of late, and I know like many other sticky political issues, there is little chance to sway the minds of baseball fans who keep up with the voting.

So instead I am going to talk about a favorite baseball card of mine from the late 1990s and write a few words about what Mark McGwire's time on the Cardinals meant to me as a baseball card collector.

First, before McGwire was traded to the Cardinals in 1997 I very much enjoyed baseball cards.  I had spent most of my life collecting, at the time as a kid in college, I still liked stopping by the card shops in St. Louis and picking up a few packs of cards here and there.  The real problem was that the Cardinals were really devoid of stars from the time the WhiteyBall Era team was blown up in 1990 until Anheuser Busch sold the team to the current ownership group.

My Cardinals collection circled around two players:

Ozzie Smith.....

who was older at this point and near the end of his career.  I still loved Ozzie, but at the beginning of the high end card era in the early to mid 1990s, he was often skipped over in cool insert sets.  There were still some nice base cards of The Wizard in sets like Finest, Ultra, and Stadium Club.  That was really it.

Then there was also the Ray Lankford collection.....

After the August Busch got cheap and refused to spend money to sign players like Willie McGee, Vince Coleman, and Terry Pendleton the Cardinals were reduced to Ozzie Smith, a bunch of castaways like Bryn Smith, and a whole bunch of kids.  Several of the young players like Bernard Gilkey, Geronimo Pena, and Brian Jordan showed flashes of stardom, but Ray Lankford was always the best of the group.  

However, playing on bad teams meant that Lankford was sort of in the same boat as Ozzie in terms of baseball cards.  Some nice base cards of the Cardinals centerfielder floated around, but not much in terms of inserts or flashy cards.  

My interest in baseball cards was really pushed at times during the mid 1990s.  Of all the years of cards in my collection, 1993 through 1995 are easily the thinnest.  Much of it has to do with the fact that the Cardinals were not good and card manufacturers generally ignored them.  

The Cardinals improved when LaRussa took over the team in 1996 and the team signed players like Andy Benes and Ron Gant, traded for Dennis Eckersley and Todd Stottlemyre and became a relevant team again.  Cardinals cards were still not really anything too special.  

Then McGwire showed up in St. Louis.  McGwire cards mattered and it meant that other Cardinals cards mattered too including players like Ray Lankford.  Outside of his Finest refractor, which was a parallel card, Lankford did not have any real high end cards.  After he started batting fourth behind McGwire he showed up in autograph sets and some of the nicer card releases.  

It was also fun to add McGwire cards to my collection.  He was the first really high-end popular player that I had ever really tried to collect.  Some of the cards were out of my price range, but there were plenty of cards that I pulled, or did manage to find at the right price, that were welcome additions.  

This was my favorite McGwire pull for a long time...

the amount of variations was a little obnoxious, but I kind of stopped when I pulled the 62 card out of my first box of 1999 Topps, but it was not my favorite.  One of my favorite products in the late 1990s was the Topps Gallery set.  Always made sure that I tried to put together that set.  Loved the look of the set, the inserts, everything about it.

This was my favorite pull from a Gallery box and landed this card before Topps went too crazy with reproducing all of their old cards, or making new cards using old designs.  These cards were really popular and highly sought after at the time.....

The Gallery Heritage set seems to be one of those card sets that has faded away in terms of popularity and price, but I am still a huge fan.  I know a lot of other 1990s collectors who still love these cards too.  If you have never seen these cards, or do not own any, they are not too hard to find on sites like Ebay and COMC.  They used to be pretty expensive too and have become a lot more affordable.  

There are plenty of other McGwire cards that I could have shown off in this space that for this post that mean a lot to me.  I have often wondered if the Cardinals hadn't traded for McGwire if I would have eventually lost the desire to collect cards.  

Not sure I can answer that, but I can say also say that I probably wouldn't have the interest and love in the hobby that I have today without him.